So I would have to know someone in Switzerland, the Faroe Islands or another European country which is not in the EU. Furthermore, even if they then sent it back to me it could be caught at customs.
It's f---ing annoying that these things are illegal. I can see the logic, though - some irresponsible mobile-haters would use them in areas (including public places) where people are quite entitled to use mobiles (I was only intending to use them in areas where they are explicitly not allowed), and if the jammers were easily available the law would become almost impossible to enforce.
I've calmed down a bit now, but I still find the problem really annoying...
Posted by System Notices (Member # 2357) on 04-15-2006, 07:46 PM:
It has been 1121 days since the last post.
Posted by Jim Bedford (Member # 4) on 04-15-2006, 07:46 PM:
There are close to a dozen threads on Film-Tech about cell phones, jamming and blocking them.
Here's a wall coating type product that purports to block cell phone signals NaturalNano rather than jam them (the illegality of jamming having been well established). Blocking seems to be a legal option and these guys are bending over backwards to accommodate the issue of communications for emergency service people that has divided so many people who have opinions on the issue.
Seems like they're in the early fishing stage for a market and support. Has anyone heard anything about them or any other companies who are trying some type of blocking system?
Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 04-15-2006, 08:15 PM:
The new Redrock Station Casino here has installed active cell phone and wifi jamming in the secure areas of the casino "cage". No wireless anything in these areas of the building. All approved by the Nevada Gaming Commission and the State Gaming Control Board. We Nevadans couldn't care less what the FCC thinks of this. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 04-16-2006, 12:13 AM:
Even if a theater can manage to block out the cellphone signals they cannot get rid of the other problem:
light pollution from phones.
Newer phones have LCD and OLED color screens damned near as bright as a full sized notebook computer. I swear it seems like most mobile phone users have obsessive compulsive disorder in checking their phones all the time. They flip open the phone in the dark theater and it is like turning on a flashlight.
When I see this, I want to take my 44 oz. oil-drum sized cup of Mr. Pibb and throw it at their head with the severity of a Nolan Ryan fastball high-heat pitch.
![[Mad]](mad.gif)
People, please leave the damned phone in the car!!!
Before anyone calls me hypocritical on this, I have managed to do just that: leave a mobile phone in my vehicle during "an emergency."
I was in Aurora, CO checking out an Austin Powers sequel with Joe Redifer at a theater where he used to work. My father gave me a phone to carry, but I deliberately left it in my truck. After the show, we noticed a pretty severe thunderstorm off to the SSW. It turned out that storm had dropped a tornado in a housing construction development not far from that theater. My father left 5 calls on the phone. He was pissed I didn't have the phone on me. What good would having the phone have done? If anything, I was better off staying in the theater rather than panicking and running out into the parking lot where I could have been sucked up into the cloud or pulverized by flying cars.
I will not, under any circumstances, take a cell phone into a theater. Period. Never.
Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 04-16-2006, 08:03 AM:
I'll take mine with me if I am working in the booth or other non-public area. If I attend a showing, I leave it in the car since I want to be entertained. Any calls received will be there when I exit.
Maybe we should "check 'em at the door"......like guns in the old West! Louis
Posted by System Notices (Member # 2357) on 01-02-2010, 02:47 PM:
It has been 1357 days since the last post.
Posted by Jim Bedford (Member # 4) on 01-02-2010, 02:47 PM:
Now here's a new story about old technology that inadvertently does what so many of us want done in all theatre auditoriums. Maybe just using some traditional building techniques in new theatres would go a long way towards solving this problem before I maim someone. Chicken wire rules! Thank you Mr. Faraday!
WSJ-Old buildings and cell and wifi signals
Culprit in Wi-Fi Failures: Chicken Wire
By GEOFFREY A. FOWLER
Two things beloved by San Francisco resident Galen Pewtherer just couldn't get along: his Edwardian-style house and wireless Internet access.
In 2008, Mr. Pewtherer tried to replace his old-fashioned cable Internet connection with a Wi-Fi network that he could share with other tenants in his building. "It turned out to be impossible," says the 38-year-old program manager at Cisco Systems Inc. "We couldn't get signal in or out of one room."
That is because Mr. Pewtherer's 80-year-old building in the Mission District, like thousands of other old homes in the Bay Area, was built with the technological equivalent of kryptonite in its walls: chicken wire. Metal wiring inside old plaster walls blocks wireless signals, frustrating San Francisco residents as wireless-equipped devices like iPhones and laptops proliferate.
The problem dates to before drywall became a popular building material in the 1950s. Before then, construction crews usually made walls out of plaster applied to lath, a base structure that holds it up. Often, lath in Victorian and Edwardian-era homes was made of wood stapled with chicken wire, a cheap fencing material that also doubles as lightweight support. The problem occurs in other cities too, but San Francisco has an unusually dense collection of old homes and gadget lovers.
"It's the old bumping into the new," says Mike Scott, a technical media manager for network gear maker D-Link Corp., who fields many questions about chicken wire. "How were people 70 years ago supposed to know that we were going to have all of these wireless gadgets?"
Many factors can disrupt wireless networks, including steel girders, air-conditioning vents and water-filled objects -- including humans and pets. But even with its many holes, chicken wire creates a particularly powerful metal shield.
Physicists call it a "Faraday cage" -- a metal structure that impedes electricity and waves -- because the fencing is the perfect size to catch waves generated by 2.4-gigahertz Wi-Fi networks. "It turns out that chicken wire is almost perfectly the right wavelength of a Wi-Fi signal," says Karl Garcia, who sets up Google Inc.'s free Wi-Fi efforts. "It acts just like a solid piece of metal."
Google's plans to bring citywide Wi-Fi to San Francisco died in 2007 for political reasons. But Mr. Garcia says making it work in a city filled with so many hills -- and so much chicken wire -- would have created unique technical challenges.
San Francisco resident Alex Menendez, a partner in boutique Internet service provider MonkeyBrains.net, discovered the difference chicken wire can make when he recently gutted a 130-year-old house in the Mission. He removed one-inch metal mesh behind plaster walls and replaced it with drywall. However, the co-owner of the property left his original walls intact.
The result: Wi-Fi networks flow smoothly through Mr. Menendez's part of the property. But according to their tests, his neighbor's walls lose as much as 75% of the signal and 33% of the throughput.
There are workarounds for the problem beyond knocking out walls, and Mr. Pewtherer in the Mission has tried almost all of them. He bought special equipment to "bridge" signals between the rooms, but it worked only in spots where there was a clean line of sight from a wireless transmitter to the receiver.
He also built a signal-boosting antenna out of an old Pringles can, known as a "cantenna," following some online instructions. Despite cranking the cantenna signal "high enough to cook bacon," it improved his signal only minimally, he says.
In the end, he gave up on wireless entirely and ran Ethernet cable through the walls and floorboards in the building. But the Ethernet network ended up solving only one wireless problem. The same factors that prevented Wi-Fi signals from penetrating Mr. Pewtherer's walls also kept out cellphone signals. "I basically had to stand on the fire escape to get a cell signal," he says.
He has since moved to another building with an open plan -- and no wireless woes.
Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 01-02-2010, 08:45 PM:
Ha ha! Guess what construction method I'll plan to use when we get around to building an ImaginAsian style theater here?
Though I am surprised that chicken wire is that effective at attenuating signals in the GHz ranges that today's wireless services use. Cell phone signals seemingly penetrate through the smallest openings, things like door cracks, windows, air ducts, and electrical outlet boxes. Always thought that some sort of fine copper mesh was needed to apply the "Faraday treatment" to a room like an auditorium.
Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 01-02-2010, 09:35 PM:
I'm surprised to, because I'd read about people claiming that the cheap & effective way to block stuff like RFID for something like your passport was to make an aluminum foil wallet, which would make a Faraday cage. I tested it by surrounding my cell phone in foil and the only way I could get it where the phone didn't get a signal was if I wrapped/encased the thing in several inches of foil. Not exactly practical for blocking wireless.
Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 01-02-2010, 10:12 PM:
Back when broadcast station studios were co-located with fm/tv transmitters, I recall that the Faraday "cage" was insulated from ground and connected to ground through a variable capacitor. Louis
Posted by Rick Raskin (Member # 1561) on 01-03-2010, 11:00 AM:
Anybody know what's happened to Leo Enticknap, the starter of this thread?
![[Frown]](frown.gif)
I was just wondering if it was possible to get something which would simply make 'em go somewhere else if they want to make a 'phone call. But I suppose that if there were, loads of people would have them and there'd be no reception anywhere.
![[Smile]](smile.gif)